December 17, 2025

EagleEye

A Newsletter for UMW Faculty and Staff

Contribute COVID-19 Stories to Special Collections and University Archives

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Archival materials detailing the University of Mary Washington’s history are used in many research projects. Photo provided by Simpson Library.

Archival materials detailing the University of Mary Washington’s history are used in many research projects. Photo provided by Simpson Library.

Today, we are all finding our way through a crisis that future students and scholars will be studying in the years ahead. We know that it is important to preserve as much of the record as possible for future researchers. Staff in Special Collections and University Archives are archiving the University’s response to COVID-19. However, there are important materials that we cannot collect without your help: individual stories. If you’re a UMW community member and have been keeping a record of these events and how they’ve impacted your life, please consider donating them to University Archives in the future. If you haven’t, please consider this a call to write and help us document this unprecedented global crisis. Read more.

Broome’s Online Learning Collective in The Chronicle of Higher Education

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College of Education Associate Professor John Broome. Photo by Norm Shafer.

College of Education Associate Professor John Broome. Photo by Norm Shafer.

College of Education Associate Professor John Broome was mentioned in a Chronicle of Higher Education article entitled, “How to Help Struggling Students Succeed Online.” Broome recently launched the Online Learning Collective, a Facebook group – which has since added a website and YouTube channel – to help faculty worldwide with high- and low-tech tools and resources, support and encouragement as they learn to teach remotely.

John Broome, an associate professor of education at the University of Mary Washington, started a Facebook group, the Online Learning Collective, to support the transition to remote teaching. It already has more than 20,000 members.

Read more.

Commencement Update from President Paino

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A Message to the Class of 2020 and the UMW Community:

I know that graduating seniors and their families are devastated that the University can’t hold commencement on May 9 due to the coronavirus and the CDC’s ban on gatherings of over 50 people for two months. So are we. Commencement is one of UMW’s favorite times of the year, a chance to celebrate all that you have accomplished and to look forward to all that you will achieve. Few moments in the life of the University are as purely joyous as commencement.

So, I want you to know that the commencement ceremony for the class of 2020 is not cancelled; it is postponed until the fall. Grades are still due May 5 in order to confer your degrees by May 15. You will be able to get an official transcript that indicates you are a UMW graduate as you start jobs or the next stage in your education.

I don’t yet know the exact date for the class of 2020’s commencement this fall or any other details, but I know all of us want to celebrate you and give you a chance to walk across that stage. You are a unique class in the history of Mary Washington, full of resilience and determination in the face of unprecedented obstacles. Over the next few weeks we will pull together our commencement planning team — along with students, faculty, and staff — to find the right day, time, and way to celebrate during the fall semester.

In the meantime, please know how proud we are of you.

Sincerely,

Troy

UMW Administration, Faculty & Staff Featured in FLS Article on Remote Work

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Members of the UMW community, including Associate Provost for Institutional Analysis and Effectiveness Debra Schleef, Executive Director of Human Resources Beth Williams, Associate Payroll Manager Leslie Petrey and Provost Nina Mikhalevsky were interviewed for a recent article in The Free Lance-Star: “Outbreak sends many Fredericksburg area residents home to work.”

Debra Schleef, associate provost of Institutional Analysis and Effectiveness

Debra Schleef, associate provost of Institutional Analysis and Effectiveness

Debra Schleef, a sociology professor at the University of Mary Washington, learned early on that the coronavirus would soon enough require staff and faculty to remotely work and teach from home.

It prompted Schleef, who also works in the provost’s office, to pull together a collection of paper and electronic files she’d need to work from home with the other three folks in the office.

She was a bit ahead of the game, already having a laptop that uses an internet connection so that makes it “not too different from sitting in front of my computer at work.” Read more.

Bylenok’s ‘With Good Reason’ Episode Rebroadcast Starting on March 27

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Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing Laura Bylenok

Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing Laura Bylenok

Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing Laura Bylenok will be featured in a rebroadcast of With Good Reason on public radio stations across the country.  An award-winning poet who stitches together her love of science with her passion for the written word, Bylenok read from her recent collection on WGR’s Poetry That Heals last spring. The rebroadcast will air starting Friday, March 27.

“In college, [Bylenok] was fascinated with genetic engineering. Now, she manipulates language, not DNA,” says the show’s description. “Her recent book turns familiar forms into poetic laboratory experiments.”

Sharing selections from her book Warp, winner of the 2015 T.S. Eliot Prize, Bylenok describes her fascination with molecular biology and genetics, explaining her use of the words and concepts they conjure to put the human condition into prose. An inspiration for her poem Genome, she tells WGR host Sarah McConnell, before reading the piece on air, is a haunting image left by a past professor, an endocrinologist who sewed together pairs of living rats.

With Good Reason airs Sundays at 2 p.m. in Fredericksburg on Radio IQ 88.3 Digital. A complete list of broadcast times and audio files of the full programs (posted the week of the show) can be found online at www.withgoodreasonradio.org. Produced by Virginia Humanities for the Virginia Higher Education Broadcasting Consortium, With Good Reason airs on 100 stations in 33 states.

Richardson Column in The Free Lance-Star

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UMW College of Business Dean Lynne Richardson

UMW College of Business Dean Lynne Richardson

College of Business Dean Lynne Richardson’s weekly column in The Free Lance-Star discusses the importance of body language. Read NONVERBAL SIGNALS SPEAK VOLUMES.

 

Did you know research shows that your body language, or nonverbal messaging, speaks louder to people than the words you say?

Some believe 55 percent of communication is nonverbal. Within that remaining 45 percent, only 7 percent of communication is attributed to the words. The remaining 38 percent comes from tone, pitch, loudness and other attributes related to how the words are said.

Here’s an illustration I use in my professional selling class, one that everyone can relate to. Read more.

COVID-19 Phishing Awareness Alert

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To the campus community:

As we continue to address the rapidly evolving COVID-19 situation, the Information Security Office is alerting the UMW community to beware of phishing campaigns that exploit COVID-19 concerns. Scammers often take advantage of health scares to distribute phishing scams. The COVID-19 pandemic continues to spawn dozens of such campaigns, scaring recipients into clicking on malicious links or attachments in emails, text messages, or social media posts.

Don’t let the pandemic lower your guard. Phishing emails will still persist, even if the theme changes. Be on the lookout for the following:

  • Fabricated notices from health organizations (e.g., the CDC or local/state health departments)
  • Fake updates from an employer about policies or procedures to address the risk
  • Phony websites containing maps and dashboards
  • Information about protecting yourself, your children or your community that contain malicious links or attachments
  • Charitable appeals to help victims of the virus, which generally are not legitimate
  • Fake links to Zoom meetings

If an offer seems too good to be true or an email seems suspicious, feel free to forward the email to abuse@umw.edu.  IT Security will take a look at it for you.

Be safe.

Mike Townes
Director of Information Technology Security/ISO
University of Mary Washington
(540)-654-2152
mtownes@umw.edu

Important Information for Zoom Users

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The following information is important for anyone using Zoom to host meetings.  If you do not use Zoom, you can disregard this message.

With the increasingly widespread use of Zoom, we’re seeing a rush of “Zoom bombing” – uninvited participants dropping into Zoom meetings to share inappropriate or distracting audio, video, or images. To prevent this, Digital Learning Support is making some changes to the default settings of our UMW-owned Zoom accounts, and offering the following safety tips for anyone using Zoom (whether a free, shared, or UMW-owned account).

  1. Avoid sharing your meeting link publicly (on social media or a public website). Share the link in a closed environment like Canvas or direct email.

  2. Change your screen sharing settings to “Host Only.” Note: If you are using a UMW-owned Zoom account, we have edited the settings to make this the default. You will need to change the settings during your meeting if you want to allow other participants to share their screen.

  3. Consider turning on the Waiting Room feature. This will require the host to approve every participant before entry into the meeting. Keep in mind that if a participant is disconnected, you will need to re-approve them for entry, so this option requires keeping an eye on your Zoom notifications during the meeting.

  4. Alternatively, consider locking your meeting (via the “Manage Participants” button in your Zoom tool tray) once all attendees are present. Keep in mind that if a participant loses connection, they will not be able to reenter unless you unlock the meeting.

Feel free to use these tools at your own discretion. Some may work for your meetings, some may not.

For more information, we recommend Zoom’s blog post on the subject: How to Keep the Party Crashers from Crashing your Zoom Event

And of course, if you have questions or run into issues, you are always welcome to contact DLS using our contact form, or by emailing dls@umw.edu.

C-Span’s American History TV to Air Great Lives Lecture

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C-Span’s American History TV will air the Great Lives lecture from Tuesday, March 10, “Female Internet Inventors,” by Claire Evans, author of Broad Band: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet. Titled “Women and Computers,” the program will air at the following times:

  • Saturday, March 28 at 10:30 p.m. EDT
  • Sunday, March 29 at 4:30 p.m. EDT
  • Monday, March 30 at 2:45 a.m. EDT

Description: The history of technology you probably know is one of men and machines, garages and riches, alpha nerds and brogrammers – but female visionaries have always been at the vanguard of technology and innovation. In fact, women turn up at the very beginning of every important wave in technology. They may have been hidden in plain sight, their inventions and contributions touching our lives in ways we don’t even realize, but they have always been part of the story. In Broad Band: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet (Penguin Random House), Claire L. Evans finally gives these unsung female heroes their due with her insightful social history of the women who made the Internet what it is today.

Speaker: Claire L. Evans is a writer and musician. She is the singer and co-author of the conceptual pop group YACHT, a founding editor of Terraform, VICE’s science-fiction vertical, and the author of Broad Band: The Untold Story of the Women who Made the Internet (Penguin Random House, 2018). She is the former Futures Editor of Motherboard, and a contributor to VICE, Rhizome, Quartz, The Guardian, WIRED, and Aeon. She is an advisor to graduate design students at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California, and has taught and lectured about science fiction, art, and technology around the world, at places like Walker Art Center, The New Museum of Contemporary Art, CalArts, Arizona State University, UC Berkeley, General Assembly San Francisco, La Gaité Lyrique, the Hirshhorn Museum, and the Riverside Museum of Art in Beijing, among many others. She lives in Los Angeles, where she runs the beloved LA-centric culture app 5 Every Day.

Change in Dining Service

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Due to the limited number of people now using dining services, and in keeping with the University and government directives regarding social distancing, Campus Dining Services will transition to providing one single serving time as of Saturday, March 28th. As of Saturday meal service will be from 5 p.m. to 6 p.m. daily in the Chandler Ballroom. A full hot dinner meal will be available to “grab & go,” and guests will also be given cold boxed meals to use for breakfast and lunch on the following day. Guests coming to dinner on Friday, March 27th at the Top of the UC may get carry-out breakfast and lunch meals to use on Saturday.

An updated dining schedule can be accessed by going to UMW.SodexoMyWay.com and clicking on the Dining Update tab. For additional information contact Dining@UMW.edu.